JAEL

I THINK the pastor’s wife was a freak before she got into the church. She real dark-skin with long, thick hair that she wear in a bun under a black church hat, the wide kind with the feathers. Sometimes the hat is dark blue, or white on Easter. But I bet when she was 14 like me, she used to have a big Afro and wear tight bellbottoms, like Thelma on Good Times. It’s something about the way her eyes sparkle and dance, instead of trying to look all holy. Like she’s remembering something fun from a long time ago. And that half-smile of hers. Like her secrets got secrets. And she got them big dick-sucking lips. Twan said that I got them too. But fuck him. Anyway. Everyone calls the preacher’s wife “Sister Sadie.” In my head, I call her “Sweet Sadie,” like that song Kachelle’s mama used to play all the time when we were little. But there ain’t nothing sweet about that lady. She dress all proper in a buttoned-up suit when she standing up there with the old as dirt Reverend collecting that love offering. Sweet Sadie ain’t old-old. Her husband probably 105. She probably 40. Her body reminds me of the album covers Kachelle uncle have in his room. Ohio Players, Lakeside, The Gap Band, Parliament-Funkadelic. They got all these ladies, some real, some cartoons, with big titties, big booties, and dick-sucking lips. Sweet Sadie try to hide all that under them churchy suits. But I bet she used to wear coochie-cutter shorts before she met Old Reverend. She might be fooling the church people, but she ain’t fooling me. I know her body is beautiful underneath them suits. I wish I could see it.

MY MAMA used to say, “Careful you go looking for something. You just might find it.” But I wasn’t looking for anything when I went into my great-grandbaby’s room not too long ago to change her bed linens and flip her mattress. I really wasn’t. I just wanted to air her room out and whatnot, and I always flip the mattresses twice a year, at the same time we turn the clocks forward or back and change the batteries in the smoke detector like they tell you to do. So I flipped the mattress and found her diary. It wasn’t too much in the beginning. Just who she didn’t like at school, and who didn’t like her. Which teachers was mean, and which ones she could charm. I didn’t approve of some of her language. But that ain’t nothing compared to things I saw about midway through it. Unnatural things. Things that just break my heart. God ain’t in this child, even though I trained her up in the way that she should go in hopes that she would not depart from it when she is old. But from the looks of things in that diary, she done departed a long time ago.

KACHELLE TOLD him we’re 16. That’s a bigger lie for me than it is for her. She just turned 15 last week. I still have to wait 6 more months. But he probably don’t care how old we really are. He claim he want us to come over to his house for a crab boil in his backyard. Just the 3 of us. Kachelle said she kind of scared. Cause he 35. But she gonna go because he cute. She say he look like Morris Day from The Time who she been in love with ever since “Purple Rain.” She dragged me to that movie four times since it came out. I like Prince, but Kachelle is IN LOVE with him and Morris Day too. She say she horny for light-skin niggas. Don’t matter either way to me. Niggas is niggas. Light-skin, dark-skin. Fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five. All the same and none of ’em worth a damn. But Kachelle the type that have to learn the hard way. She all excited about this nigga and a crab boil. And he say he gon take us to the beach, and she all excited about that too, knowing good and well I don’t like the beach. I just want to see the inside of that big house of his. See what he got in there.

I wish I could go to Sweet Sadie’s house . . . without Old Rev there, of course.

I DON’T know how to talk to this child. These kids today . . . they is different than how we was, coming up. What do I say to her that won’t get her face all crumpled up out of shape? Littlest thing I say set her off. I tell her to pick up behind herself, put her dishes in the sink at least, make up her bed, put her dirty clothes in the hamper. And she get mad. Just get all bent out of shape if I say anything to her. Sucking her teeth, or acting like she don’t even hear me half the time.

The only way I know how to fight the battle for this child’s salvation is to give it to the Lord. I pray for her. I do.

Every time she write in that diary, it gets worser and worser. I wish I had the right words to say. I pray to God to touch my mouth so that I can speak, and to touch her ears, heart, and mind so that she can hear.

Because God knows I don’t want no abomination living under my roof.

No, these kids today not like we was. We respected our elders. We ain’t sass and talk back. We did what we were told to do, and you only had to tell us once. None of this, “In a minute . . .” We didn’t have to be told twice. And if we did, we got the back of my mama’s hand for our troubles.

But I don’t hit this child no more. I can count on one hand the number of times I whupped her in her fourteen years on this earth and in my home, and I made sure that nobody else hit her either. There was enough hitting going on between her mama and her trifling daddy when she was just a lil bitty thing, which is how she come to live with me. So I didn’t want to do it if I didn’t have to, but she just has this way about her . . . Like she don’t respond to words she don’t like. She didn’t even respond the way I wanted her to when I braided them switches and tore up them skinny, yella legs of hers when she was little. It’s like she didn’t even feel it. Didn’t cry a lick. One time, when she was six and I took the switch to them legs, she just looked at me . . . just give me this look that froze my blood and sent me straight to my Bible. “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” Luke 10:19.

And I stay in my Bible, I stay on my knees and prayed up over this child. I thank the Lord that she not fast in the behind like that lil friend of hers, chasing after grown men. But she still ain’t right, sitting up there with me in service every Sunday after Sunday School and then Bible study on Wednesday night. Every week. Sit right there and don’t say a word. And to look at her, you wouldn’t know. She look sweet in the face. Folks think she just quiet. But in her heart, her spirit, her mind . . . That ain’t of God. There is a battle going on, saints. I stay in my Bible and on my knees as a prayer warrior for this child’s soul. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12.

SWEET SADIE talked to me at church today! She asked me how I was doing and how Granny’s doing. I told her we’re doing fine, and I didn’t even mind that she kind of had that look on her face that people get when they talking to The Girl With The Dead Parents. Pity. I hate that shit. But it wasn’t so bad with Sweet Sadie. I feel like she really care.

ONE THING I can say good about her: she ain’t letting none of them boys mess with her, far as I can tell. They don’t come sniffing around here like they did with her mama and her mama’s mama, my daughter, God rest their souls. And I was up at the corner store the other day getting some Goody powders, and I overheard two fellas in the checkout line talking about her. Either they didn’t see me, or didn’t know I’m her grandmama. And the one fella say to the other one, “My man told me some girl kicked that nigga Jay’s ass.”

And the other one say, “Naw, man. It was Jay’s lil brother, Twan. And it didn’t happen like that, but it was some wild shit. That Jael, man. That lil redbone that live over on Perkins? That bitch crazy. Twan said ever since they were in grade school, she’d fight dudes for trying to grab her ass. She been going toe-to-toe with dudes around the block for years. So he figure, she must like girls, right?”

“Like what? A bulldagger,” the other one say.

“Yeah, man!” And then he lowered his voice, but I could still hear him. “You know I hollered at her a couple of times around here. Cause she fine.”

Now these fellas had to be thirty, thirty-five years old. Just filthy.

“So me and Jay and Twan were standing outside the store that day,” he say, “and here she come down the sidewalk with her friend. Twan figure she not gon’ try to kick his ass with us standing there too, right?”

“Right, right . . .”

“Twan called her name, and she ignored him. Just kept walking past. So he called her a bulldagger and ran up behind her and grabbed her ass. Maaan, she swung around with a bottle, smashed it against the wall, and had it at that nigga’s throat!”

“Redbones is crazy, man.” That’s what the other one said.

Then the first fella say, “I didn’t even see that bottle! It just came outta nowhere! She ain’t stab him, but that’s just cuz her friend—the one with the big titties? Lachelle? Kachelle!—she just started screaming, ‘He ain’t worth it! He ain’t worth it!’ But man, she was gonna do it. Jael crazy.”

That’s right, baby. Let ’em think you crazy. Let them think you don’t like boys, even though that is unnatural in the eyes of God. Least they leave you alone that way.

But maybe she really is crazy.

They say bad seeds skip a generation. My daughter Timna was just like Jael. Just looked right through you. Her best friend, a sweet, pretty girl named Gloria Mae, got killed by a train, and Timna never shed a tear. Not a single one. The two of them was playing around on the tracks—after I told them a million times to stay off them tracks—and poor Gloria Mae didn’t get out of the way in time. Sixteen years old . . . Lord, rest her soul. And you’d think a person would be sad to lose a friend, to see ’em die like that. But not Timna. She just wasn’t fazed. Just floated through life for years all closed up in herself until the Lord just took her one day. Walking home in the rain from her job down at Woolworth’s, struck by lightning, twenty-four years old. I told her a million times not to walk out in them thunderstorms, to get a gypsy cab and I’d pay the carfare, but she was hardheaded. And a decade after she died, here comes Jael, just like her.

And Jael’s mother, Keturah, that child wasn’t built for this world. I raised her from the time she was six, when Timna died. I did the best I could. But in the end, she let that nigga, Jael’s daddy, beat on her until he killed her. Wasn’t even her husband, just some no ’count Negro.

But here comes this fat yella baby, head full of good, curly hair. Eyes bright as buttons. But just like my Timna, she looked right through you. And just like my Timna, I give her everything I have. I have spared her the ugliness about her daddy and what happened to her mama. I am the only mother she has ever known. And she has wanted for nothing.

I tried, with Keturah and Jael, to do the things my mother did for us. Tried to teach them things, like how to cook a pot of rice just right, how to frost a cake without tearing it up, how to wash and fold laundry, how to make the bed, how to keep theyself clean. Keturah took to it all, loved baking and frying chicken and helping me out in the kitchen. She laughed easy and never talked back. She was a good girl. But then that nigga came along and took her away from here.

Jael is different. She’ll cook and clean and do whatever I ask, for the most part. But there is no joy in those bright eyes, not even when she was little. It’s like her body is in one place, but her spirit is somewhere else altogether. It’s always been that way. Now sometimes she will come in my room and watch my stories with me. She likes The Young and the Restless. And some Friday nights, she’ll watch my TV programs with me. Dallas and Falcon Crest. But most nights? I have to make her sit down and eat dinner with me. She live in her own world and keep me shut out of it.

Well, at least she don’t give none of these boys the time-a day. Unlike her lil fast-tail friend Kachelle. Jael not impressed by this high-yella nigga what she call “Morris Day,” come sniffing ’round these young girls. I know his type. Lord Jesus, I know that type too well. One thing always lead to another with them. Make you feel like the Queen of Sheba, like you the only one. You say stop, they act like you said go.

My old neighbor Miss Maybelle used to yell at us from her front porch, “Don’t let the boys fool ya.” We just thought she was a crazy old lady tryna keep us from having our fun, you know. But she knew. She knew. And we didn’t listen. I think sometimes how things mighta been if I had listened. Probably wouldn’t be no Timna, no Keturah, no Jael. Just me in the world. Doing what, I don’t know. Something.

Anyway. Jael ain’t said a word to me ’bout Twan or that crab boil that this Morris Day is supposed to be having. But she don’t tell me nothing. Just do what she want to do.

CAN YOU suck dicks and still be saved? I’m just wondering. I don’t care about dicks or being saved. Tracy round the corner suck dick all the time. But she’ll do anything, so you can’t go by her. Kachelle uncle had this white girlfriend, and Kachelle used to see her doing it on their back porch when they thought everybody was sleep. Kachelle says that sucking dick is nasty, and she will never do it. Kachelle is always talking about what she’s never going to do. I asked her if she like girls. Maybe she want to do things with girls. She got mad and said that that wasn’t funny. I said I wasn’t trying to be funny. And if she like girls that wouldn’t bother me. But she wouldn’t listen. Just shook her head and started crying about how she’s a good girl. Kachelle is a big crybaby. If I wasn’t around, people would mess with her even more than they already do. Anyway. Today at church, Old Rev was talking about how you have to be saved and give up the sinful pleasures of the flesh if you want to get to heaven. Seem like saved folks don’t like to do anything but talk about being saved, complain about sin, and go to church. And church be boring as hell, so I just watch Sweet Sadie and think about her sexy body and her secret past.

I NEED the Lord to give me a sign. I want to stay in His will. But what is worse? Jael not coming to church, or coming with a reprobate mind? That’s what our Bible study was about this week: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” Romans 1:28–32.

That is Jael to a T. Full of debate, deceit, and malignity. And disobedient! At a certain point, if you just willful about your sin, God will give you over to a reprobate mind. As Deacon Sharpe explained this Scripture on Wednesday night, I looked at Jael out the corner of my eye. She had that blank look on her face at first, but then she smiled a little. And for a second, I thought Jesus had heard my cry and worked a miracle in her heart. But then I followed her eyes. She was smiling at Sister Sadie! And it was just like the Scripture say: wickedness, without natural affection. I could see it! But I don’t think anyone else could see it. Probably just looked like an innocent smile to them, because they don’t know the things I know, the unspeakable things she wrote about Sister Sadie in that diary.

Sister Sadie happened to look up at that moment and smiled back at Jael. Not that I blame Sister Sadie for just being polite and kind to an orphaned child. Jesus said to feed the orphans and the widows. But I know my Savior would not approve of the thoughts of this particular orphan.

Well. I made up my mind right then and there. I am not going to wake her up for church come Sunday morning, and no more Wednesday night Bible study either. She will not do her wickedness in Greater Holiness Baptist Church. Not as long as I draw breath in my body.

I just hope the Lord understands why I’m keeping her out of His house.

I DON’T like Morris Day. Turns out his real name is Jamie, a girl name. But I don’t know which name is worse because “Morris Day” makes me think of Morris the picky cat in the commercial. And come to think of it, he kinda looks like a yellow tabby cat. Gray cat eyes, whiskers. I’ve seen thicker mustaches on boys in my grade. He’s not even as cute as the real Morris Day. And he smokes cigarettes, so his breath smells horrible. And his house ain’t nothing special either. It’s got two floors, but the rooms are tiny. He’s got one room he calls a Florida room. It just look like a living room to me. And the rooms are crammed full of shit that belonged to his dead mother. She had terrible taste and she liked to make ceramic cats. I counted 50 fucking cats before I gave up. The crabs were good though. Real hot and salty, big chunks of meat, like I like them. Granny makes shitty crabs. Watery with no taste. Not worth all the hassle it takes to get at the stringy meat. She buys the teeny-weeny ones.

Morris Day/Jamie bought the big crabs that cost $8 a dozen. When he was dropping them in the pot, Kachelle was hiding behind me like she was scared. He grabbed one of the crabs with some tongs and played like he was going to put it on her. She started screaming and ran upstairs. Morris/Jamie ran up after her still holding the crab. After a minute, I thought Kachelle was going to run back down, but she didn’t. So I went upstairs. The crab was at the top of the stairs crawling toward me. I kicked it down the stairs back to the first floor. I heard a crack when it landed. When I turned around, Kachelle was coming out of one of the bedrooms, grinning like an idiot. Morris/Jamie was right behind her, still holding the stupid tongs, sweating like a crackhead. And the whole time we ate the crabs in the backyard, he was sweating. So greasy and disgusting. And he kept cracking jokes that wasn’t even funny. But Kachelle laughed all loud like he was Eddie Murphy.

When we walked home after, I waited for her to tell me something, but she didn’t. So I said, He sweat like a pig, and he ain’t even cute. And his house is full of junk. Kachelle just rolled her eyes and told me I don’t like nobody and she’ll talk to me later. That was four days ago. I called her a couple of times and Miss Debra said she wasn’t home. And she still hasn’t called me back.

I took the long way back from the store yesterday, cut through the field behind the high school, and walked past Jamie’s house. He was in the driveway washing his Cadillac, which is really his dead mother’s Cadillac. A cigarette dangled between his lips like it was gonna fall any second. And he was sweating like a pig, as usual, even though he was wearing an undershirt with no sleeves. His arms were soft and pale. No muscles in sight. Soft-ass nigga. I pretended like I didn’t see him, but he hollered Hey, Pretty Girl at me. I ignored him and kept walking. Then he said, You just missed your friend. She just left. He kept on talking and I kept on walking.

Fuck Kachelle and her bad taste in men.

NEVER IN all my days have I known a child so ungrateful. She has never known a hungry day in her life, not in my house. I bet she wouldn’t be so high and mighty in somebody’s foster care, which is where her behind would’ve ended up if I hadn’t taken her in out of the goodness of my heart. I raised my child and outlived her. My grandchild too. I believe I have earned some rest on this earth and my crown in heaven. But where else was she going to go? I do my best to make ends meet, and this lil heffa says I make shitty crabs?

Well. When she brings her tail back here from wherever she run off to this afternoon, I got something for her. It’s time for her to get a job.

ME AND Kachelle went to the beach with Jamie. Kachelle called him her goddaddy and she had on a new yellow bathing suit he bought her. He lifted her up high in the air and she screamed and laughed as he threw her into the waves over and over again. Kachelle is not a small girl. So I guess he’s stronger than those weak-ass arms of his look. Then they got tired of that game, and Kachelle climbed up and rode on Jamie’s shoulders as he walked farther out into the ocean. I couldn’t see, but I imagined his hands clutching Kachelle’s thighs. Every now and then, her body would shake. From laughing probably. They got so far away, I couldn’t hear her anymore.

It was hot, but not too bad under the umbrella Jamie rented. I sat on a blanket with a People magazine I picked up when we had stopped at 7–11 to get soda, ice, sunflower seeds, and potato chips. I had already told Kachelle I wasn’t getting in the water because I didn’t have a bathing suit. She said, You can get in with your shorts on. They’ll dry. I just rolled my eyes. She’s so dumb. But Jamie stood next to her nodding like she was just the smartest girl in the whole wide world.

When we walked down the boardwalk heading to the beach, we passed a shop selling beach stuff. Kachelle grabbed a pair of white sunglasses, some yellow flip-flops, and a huge towel with different color fish on it. She handed everything to Jamie and he paid for it. They had bathing suits too, right next to the cash register. Jamie didn’t offer to buy me one. Not that I would’ve taken it.

The water came up to Jamie’s neck at one point because I could only see Kachelle. It looked like she was sitting on top of the waves. Then she tumbled backward off Jamie’s shoulders and waves covered them both. When I could see their heads again, they were facing each other and Kachelle had her arms wrapped around Jamie’s shoulders. How could she stand his nasty cigarette breath that close up? UGH. I couldn’t see for the water, but I bet her legs were probably wrapped around his back. Then they both looked back at me. I lifted the People magazine to cover my face.

To hell with them.

I started daydreaming about Sweet Sadie. I bet she had come to the beach lots of times before she became a preacher’s wife. I imagine her riding down the shoreline on the back of some big dude’s motorcycle. Wearing a white bikini, which looks so good against her brown, brown skin. And the dude, I picture him wearing dark shades and a denim jacket with no sleeves that shows off his muscles. But when they start to pass me, Sadie tells him to stop and let her off the motorcycle. She stomps through the sand toward me and reaches out her hands. I try not to stare at her titties falling out of the top of the bikini, but she notices and just laughs. She pulls me up off the blanket and hugs me. She smells like vanilla and roses. And she keeps hugging me and we start walking, walking, walking down the shore.

And then I feel the water on my feet and pull away.

I run back to the blanket I brought from home. Sweet Sadie sits next to me and says, What’s wrong? And I tell her about the water. About how I run showers and baths that I never get into to make Granny think I’m bathing. I just do what Granny call a birdbath, at the sink. I get clean from head to toe like that. Just takes a lot of scrubbing and rinsing. And I tell her about the day my mama died and how I saw it all underwater. We were all under the water. My mama, my daddy, and me. We were in our house, in the bedroom, and I was in my crib. Underwater. Sweet Sadie says, How can you remember so much as a baby? I say, I don’t know how. I just do. And I saw what he did. And I tried to scream but the water filled my mouth and then everything went black. Granny lied to me. She said they were killed in a car accident. But one time when I was 8, I heard Auntie Vashti tell Granny that somebody slit his throat in prison and let him bleed out like the animal he was. Auntie sighed real sad and said he had seemed like such a nice boy. Granny said she knew from jump he wasn’t no good, but my mama didn’t know it because he had her nose wide open . . .

I remember his face that day in our house. Tight and mean. We were underwater that day, but I remember it.

Sweet Sadie rubs my arm and calls me Baby Girl. Baby Girl, she says, you weren’t underwater. Those were your tears.

I looked up over the top of the magazine, and the daydream was over. Jamie was walking back to shore with Kachelle on his back. When they got back to me and the umbrella, Kachelle’s head still rested on his shoulder, like she never wanted to let go.

On the ride home, Kachelle sat in the back seat with me. I was still mad that she had sat in the front seat on the ride to the beach. Jamie lit up another damn cigarette and I rolled the window down and let the wind hit my face. Then I heard Kachelle call my name real soft. WHAT? I asked her, real loud. She kept whispering. Telling me to remember what she told me when she woke me up, calling from Jamie’s house early in the morning. That if her mama asked, we took the bus to the beach at 8:00 in the morning.

The truth was, she didn’t call me back to ask me to come to the beach with them until 1:00.

I turned my back on her and pretended I was sleep.

IT’S TIME to toss out that old throw rug in my living room. I been meaning to get rid of it. I got myself so worked up fussing with Jael about getting a job that I must’ve tripped over that rug. Yeah, that had to be it. I must’ve lost my balance. I was fussing, then I just felt myself falling, and the next thing you know, I was on my hands and knees. I must’ve tripped on that old rug. Or maybe it was that vertigo, I think they call it. My friend Alma gets it from time to time. That had to be it.

I was there on the floor, and Jael just looked down at me. Didn’t offer to help me up or nothing! And I can’t even repeat what she said to me when I told her to start looking for a job.

I crawled over to the settee and pulled myself up. And that girl just stood there and watched me struggle.

And ever since then, she stay holed up in her room. She came out to get a plate of food a few times and to wash up, but that’s it.

Yes, I lied to her about her mama and her daddy. But Lord knows I was just trying to protect her from the ugliness. He knows my heart.

Maybe I could try and talk to her about that, now that she’s older. But she won’t come out of the room. She wouldn’t even come to the phone when that Kachelle called. Just kept calling and calling, till the girl finally came to the house. Jael wouldn’t even talk to her through the bedroom door. Kachelle came in here talking all sweet to me like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Granny D this, Granny D that. I started to tell her, “If I was ya granny, you wouldn’t be the hussy you are.” But I asked Jesus to bind my tongue and He answered.

KACHELLE SWORE on Miss Debra’s Bible that all that time she was alone at Jamie’s house before we went to the beach, all she let him do was kiss her. I said, Yeah, kiss you WHERE? And she got all mad. I didn’t want to talk to her for a long time after that day at the beach. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was lying to me. And I’m sick and tired of people lying to me. But I guess me and Kachelle are friends again. I worry about her more than I’m mad at her. But when she does stuff to make me worry, that makes me mad! Being friends with someone who can’t look out for themselves is a lot of work and I’m tired. But Kachelle would just say, I can look out for myself! But she can’t. I know she can’t. She ain’t built for it.

So I finally said yes when she asked me for the fifty-leventh time to spend the night at her house. She called Jamie a couple of times while I was there. They talked about him taking her shopping for school clothes next week. I asked her how she was going to explain new clothes to Miss Debra and she covered the phone receiver and shushed me. Then I asked her does she make Jamie brush his filthy cigarette mouth before they kiss, and she dragged the phone into the closet and shut the door. I guess I was just supposed to entertain myself while they gabbed away.

We laid in Kachelle’s bed later, talking, but I didn’t say half the things I was thinking. She kept going on about Jamie this and Jamie that. And how boys her age just want to fuck her, and have the nerve to not even be cute. How Jamie was happy just to kiss her and spend time with her and spend money on her. And how he didn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do. I wondered how long that was going to last, not making her do things. How long before he turned into someone else and hurt her? But I kept all that to myself.

Then she said, Why you being so quiet? You jealous? And I said, OF WHO? No answer. Then I asked her a question. I said, Do you think heaven is a real place? She said, Of course it is. Then I said, I think heaven is a lie. And she sat up in the bed and said, God is going to strike you down for talking like that, Jael! I just laughed and told her God is just a white man stupid niggas made up, like Santa Claus. Well, she didn’t like that one bit. She folded her arms across her chest and said, Well if there ain’t no God, then answer me this. Where do people go when they . . .

She couldn’t even say the word “die,” with her scary ass. I just laughed and turned over in the bed. And then we were just quiet until we fell asleep.

The next evening, I was walking back home and went past Jamie’s house again. He was in his front yard watering the grass with the hose. The sun had went down so it was kinda cool and he wasn’t sweating for once. He said, Hey, Pretty Girl. And I said hey back. He said, You always going somewhere in a hurry. Stop by and see me sometime.

I said, Okay.

THIS IS all my fault. I picked the child’s name from the Bible, at random, but I was the one that picked it. My mother and her mother before her and her mother before her, my sisters and my aunts and their children . . . we all had our names chose out the Bible. The oldest woman in the family would open the big family Bible and point her finger on the page. Whatever woman’s name was closest to her finger that was the name of the girl-child to be born. And we kept turning pages and pointing until we found a woman’s name. All we ever birth were girls. For seven generations, nothing but girls. If I believed in luck, and if our lives had turned out better than how they did, I’d say it was a lucky seven. Even still, I sometimes play a bunch of sevens in the lotto. Just every once in a while, no regular thing. Because maybe the sevens is a message from the Lord. Folks like to say, “God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.” But that ain’t Scripture. That’s a hymn. It’s Romans 11:33 that says, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”

Playing them sevens helped keep my lights on a time or two. Lord can’t be mad at that. Seven generations of us. Dorcas in 1871. Adah in 1890. Adah’s five daughters: Chloe, Mara, Shelomith, Salome, and in 1906, my mother, Matred. Damaris, me, 1922, and my younger sisters, Vashti, Euodia, and Cozbi. My daughter, Timna, in 1937. Jael’s mother, Keturah, in 1955. And a bunch of nieces, great-nieces, and cousins, I forget. I used-ta could name us all.

I named her Jael. My finger landed right on top of the name. Usually I had to look around the page until I found a name for a girl, or start over on another page. But that time, I landed right on it. I was so excited by that, thinking it was a sign that this child would be blessed. That she would be different. I didn’t stop to read the story of Jael in the Bible, not till much later.

Maybe if I had read it, I mighta chose a different name. But probably not. What I look like going against six generations of tradition? We never talked about the stories behind the names. The name picked was the name given.

When Jael was first taking the bus to school, some of the kids would tease her, call her “Jailbird,” especially that Twan. He one of Verdine Russell’s ill-mannered grandsons. He’d follow her home from the bus stop, and I’d hear him out front there, calling her “Jailbird! Jailbird!” And the other kids would laugh and join in. And that Kachelle told them time and time again, “It’s JAH-ell.” They kept on. But Jael didn’t pay ’em no mind. At the time, I thought she was just doing a good job of ignoring them and leaving them to the Lord like I told her to. But now I know that their teasing just watered that bad seed planted in her.

We would come together for the naming. My mother and her mother, when they were living; my sisters and me; our children and then their children and so on. We’d cook and eat. We’d ask Father God to bless the mother and the girl-child yet to be born. We’d laugh and tell stories. And someone, usually whatever man was around at the time, would always ask, “But what if it’s a boy?” And we’d just laugh some more.

Even if we was arguing, fussing, and fighting with each other just the day before, the tradition brought us together. We honored tradition. What else were we going to cling to? We had five living generations when Jael was born because we had our babies young, at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Ain’t no shame or pride. Just the way it was. A family full of women, and we had the worst time with men. The good men died young, and the terrible ones stayed just long enough to make you wish they would die. God forgive me.

Some years back, the news people came and did a story on our family reunion. It was on a national program. But now my mama, my aunts, my sisters, my daughter, Jael’s mother . . . all gone, ’cept my baby sister Vashti, some cousins, and the nieces and great-nieces. I guess the rest of them just naming their babies any old thing now because I don’t hear from ’em. Maybe even had some sons. Who knows?

Jael was the last one I named. And she is my cross to bear.

And I named the ones I didn’t give birth to, the ones I drank the tea and got rid of, Lord Jesus, forgive me. Anah. Shimeath. Ruth. Baara.

CIGARETTE MOUTH didn’t taste as bad as I thought it would. Or maybe because I had something else on my mind, I didn’t care. In the end, it would be worth it. The cigarettes Jamie kept smoking made me want to gag, though. But I didn’t. I just smiled at him through the smoke.

We had been on the couch kissing for a while. Then Jamie said it was starting to get dark and maybe I should leave before Granny got worried. Plus he had to get up at 3 in the morning for work. He worked at the Sunbeam bread factory. I told him that Granny wouldn’t be home from Bible study for at least another hour. And that we could do more than just kiss. He asked me if I had done more, with somebody else. I said no, which is the truth. Jamie asked me if I was going to tell Kachelle. I said I don’t tell her my business. He gave a tiny little smile like he really liked that answer but didn’t want to let on. And I told him that. He laughed and said, You don’t miss anything, do you?

He started to push me back on the couch. I asked him if he had a rubber. He looked all disappointed and said, Yeah. He got up to go and I told him to brush his teeth while he was at it. He laughed and said, Girl, you a trip.

By the time he finished brushing and came back with the rubber, I was standing in his front yard. It was dark out there and quiet. Jamie came outside and asked me, What’s the matter? He didn’t say it in a mad way. Kinda in a whisper. I told him nothing was the matter. I just changed my mind and I better get home. He nodded real slow and said okay and that I was welcome anytime.

When I walked home, it was like all the thoughts in my head were competing to be first. I couldn’t hold on to one at a time. When I turned the corner onto my street, one thought finally won out: Sweet Sadie. I hadn’t seen her in a while ever since Granny started leaving for church without me. But I think about her a lot and I miss her.

I SLEPT through it. I hadn’t been sleeping too well these last couple of weeks, but I took a pill as soon as I got home from Bible study, and it knocked me right out. But Barbara next door said she heard it, woke her out of a dead sleep, just a little after three this morning. She said it was a big boom! And she thought it was thunder and then rolled over and went back to sleep. But then she heard the sirens.

Some kind of gas leak is what the police said, from a gas stove. It was on the news this morning. They said his name was Jamie McWhite, but they didn’t have no picture. My mother was friends with some McWhites long ago when I was a girl. Barbara said he was that light-skin one drive the white Cadillac around here. Said his mother—rest her soul—her last name was Porter and that was her house he was living in. Now I remember her from way back when, but I didn’t know her to have no kids. Barbara said Jamie’s daddy raised him, over on the east side. That’s why I didn’t know him. But Barbara know a woman what live down the street from him, and she told Barbara that every time she saw him, he had a cigarette in his mouth. And cigarettes and gas don’t mix. Good thing he lived at a dead end and the property next to his was vacant. Barbara say there was a little damage to the houses behind his, but “no other fatalities” is what the news said.

Jael did something this morning she ain’t done in years. She climbed in my bed with me and went back to sleep.

A little while later that Kachelle started calling on the phone for Jael, sounding sad. Just calling and calling all day. But Jael shook her head no when I tried to hand her the phone. Finally, about the tenth time that lil hussy called, I just told her, “God don’t like ugly,” and hung up the phone. She ain’t call no more after that.

But I want to talk to Jael too. I still don’t know what to say to her. This child thought she was doing the right thing. And yes, he was a nasty, nasty man. But the Bible clearly say, “Thou shalt not kill” and “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” And what if the woman Barbara knows saw Jael leaving that house yesterday? What if she tells the police?

Maybe Jael can tell the police how he was messing around with her and that Kachelle. People would understand what kind of person he was.

But what if they don’t? What if they say Jael is a fast-tail girl who . . . ?

Lord Jesus, give me the right words to say to this child and give her ears to hear!

And watch over me, Father God.

I’M GOING to set my alarm clock to get up Sunday morning and go to church with Granny. Wanna see Sister Sadie again. For real and not just in my dreams.

Granny always say, Every shut eye ain’t sleep. And that’s how I am. I don’t tell everything I know. I keep some stuff to myself. Sometimes forever, sometimes till the time is right. I just let people think I don’t know what’s going on. And then, when they least expect it . . . I strike.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. As long as people keep their mouths shut, leave me alone, and mind their business, it doesn’t have to be that way at all.

Extolled above women be Jael,

The wife of Heber the Kenite,

Extolled above women in the tent.

He asked for water, she gave him milk;

She brought him cream in a lordly dish.

She stretched forth her hand to the nail,

Her right hand to the workman’s hammer,

And she smote Sisera; she crushed his head,

She crashed through and transfixed his temples.

At her feet he curled himself, he fell, he lay still;

At her feet he curled himself, he fell;

And where he curled himself, let it be, there he fell dead.

—Song of Deborah, Judges 5:24–27